Children have a smaller diameter esophagus than adults, and consequently they choke on their food more often. In particular, hotdogs are the leading choking hazard for children in the United States. Thus, children choke more often on hot dogs than on candy, coins, buttons, marbles, balls, small pieces of action figures or other toys, meat, or any other item. Furthermore, children have died from choking on hot dogs (see The Miami Herald, Miami, Fla., Jan. 7 and 14, 2000). And while most of the time the obstruction is cleared and the child does not die, choking nevertheless is a frightening experience for kids. Choking is especially dangerous at schools and other places with a high child-to-adult ratio because children are generally not as informed and able to recognize that another person is choking and to physically dislodge the obstruction. Because of the risk of choking deaths, many American schools no longer even serve hot dogs, a quintessential American food.
To prevent choking, a child's food should be cut into small pieces. Many kids do not chew their food enough, particularly pieces of meat, so it's best to cut their food into pieces small enough to pass through their esophagus. Because most hot dogs have a diameter that is larger than the diameter of most kid's esophagus, slicing the hot dog into disc-shaped sections of the same diameter does not necessarily eliminate the choking hazard. Many pediatricians therefore recommend that hot dogs be quartered lengthwise in addition to being sliced laterally into discs, so that the resulting pieces are small enough to easily slide down a child's throat. These smaller pieces are therefore much less likely to cause choking in children, as well as elderly persons, pets, or other persons with small throats.
Using a knife to manually cut hot dogs into such small pieces is a rather difficult and tedious task. For schools, camps, day care facilities, and so forth that serve large numbers of kids, such manual slicing is too labor-intensive and time-consuming to be practical. There are several known devices for cutting hot dogs, however, none of them provide for cutting hot dogs into pieces small enough to prevent children from choking. Most of these devices merely provide for cutting slits in the hot dog prior to cooking, and do not provide for cutting all the way through the dog.
Accordingly, what is needed but not found in the prior art is a slicer for cutting hot dogs into pieces that are small enough that children do not choke on them, and that is safe and easy to manufacture and use. There is further a need for such a slicer that that can slice multiple hot dogs simultaneously for serving a larger number of children at once, as well as for such a slicer that only slices one hot dog at a time for serving a smaller number of children at once. It is to the provision of such hot dog slicers that the present invention is primarily directed.